Local community girls clean up historical site

Posted: Friday, Oct 18th, 2013BY: Nicholas Mattson

Nicholas Mattson/Atascadero News
American Heritage Girls Troop Ca0411 of Atascadero stand proudly behind 20 bags of debris, leaves and sticks they cleaned up from the steps of the Atascadero Inn, which burned down in 1934, on Traffic Way between the fire station and Atascadero Fine Arts Academy.

ATASCADERO — Along Traffic Way, just past the Lewis Avenue fire station — not quite as far as the Atascadero Fine Arts Academy, just between the two — there is a small, shady nook where a rose garden survives as remnants of the Atascadero Inn.

Normally, this nook is overgrown with weeds and sticks and disregarded, but on Thursday, Oct. 10 there were 14 American Heritage Girls picking the trash out of the treasure of Atascadero history.

Back in the original days of “Tent City,” the Mercantile or “La Plaza” was the third major building to be completed, in 1917, as E.G. Lewis, with the help of the original settlers of the colony of Atascadero to set in motion the development of his utopian dream.